Take my heart away
by Atheniandream
Summary: She knows how to get him back...


Title: Take My Heart Away  
  
Author: Athena  
  
Content Warnings: Angst, Romancy-Clancy! Light humor...   
  
Pairings: S/J, S/Other  
  
Spoilers: Chimera, General Season info  
  
Season: Seven-Before Lost City but after Chimera  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Summary: She has a way to get him back...  
  
Author's notes: Didn't' like it was much as I thought that I would have, enjoy  
  
Archive: ANYWHERE, SJD, Sam and jack, YADA... cheers Starprops for the Beta  
  
Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING. I know this.  
  
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Take My Heart Away  
  
~I wish now,  
  
On the stormiest of days,  
  
How I use to dream,  
  
For you to take my heart away...~  
  
Glancing down to straighten her jacket, Sam deepened a sigh, before knocking on the hardwood.   
  
Hard to believe that in 7 years, she'd known the same door, same wood, grain, texture, under her knuckles as she pressed them against the cold exterior. The man sat behind it had changed even less. But she had, bringing her to the reason why she was here. Again. It had been so long since they'd talked with anything other than professionalism, especially after 'Pete' and 'the incident'. Not that it mattered now. To her, too far in the past, and too unimportant to measure against anything that she felt now. This was about starting a fresh. And mending old wounds...  
  
She had made her choice, the last card to play, and she wanted to share it, with him. Mister 'I'm not talking to you anymore, Carter'.  
  
Funnily enough that she had decided to leave this particular route till the very last, something, which had he been on speaking terms with her, he probably would have laughed about...The solid-based irony of their relationship, that now stemmed their history, threatening their future.  
  
In some weird way, she'd always felt over lived, loop-holed and constant, reliving their mistakes time and time again. She never ever wanted to go back to that moment again...  
  
  
  
3 Months Previous...  
  
Jack wished, probably for the first time in his life, that he hadn't caught the sight of her blonde hair and long legs against the counter of the coffee shop at 7:45 in the morning. It had to be a first, of what seemed like many now, wishes that were. Maybe if he'd started wishing in the first place, none of what happened would have come to pass. Right now, he was all out of sarcasm and whim, which wasn't the best of Jack O'Neill laden situations.   
  
And she looked like a walking Oil painting...  
  
They'd been sitting opposite one another for at least a half hour now. Refusing to speak, yet wanting to speak, intent on sipping their coffee, and staring anywhere but in each other's perspective eye line. It wasn't right, for two people who knew so much about each other; the way she liked her coffee, (Extra dry, with caramel) the way he ate tictacks (in odd numbers), to be so uninformed in each other's lives, specifically, in relationship department. More specifically, the fact that his 'Major', his 'Carter'. SHE was engaged. And not even to him.  
  
"Sir?" Her usual smile was covered, fear, and hesitance muting her gestures.  
  
A cold chill rose against the back of his neck causing Jack to stiffen, contract, leaving only his eyes to show signs of discomfort. He shuffled in his seat; not knowing what actions were best served in the moment of emotional discomfort, and then reached for the lukewarm coffee mug in front of him.  
  
"I'm sorry."   
  
"For what?" Even though it felt a more rhetorical than anything else, he still shrugged it away, glancing at her briefly to see her squinting at her shoes. Even at the age of 34, Carter still had the little-girl routine down to a perfection that made his toes curl.  
  
"He really loves me,"   
  
But he wasn't, that was the point.   
  
"Ditto," He couldn't help but edge his tone towards indignation at any thought that could lead or end with the name 'Pete'.  
  
Yea, he knew his name...and hated it with almost as much passion as he...In some childish instant, that seems to claim every man, he wanted to hiss the word vehemently under his breath, just to make her feel that little bit guiltier...  
  
"Look," She grew instantly agitated in watching him look away from her.  
  
"I'm not going to wait around for ever, Jack. And you were the one who said that I deserved more! If you hadn't then I wouldn't have..."  
  
"I said what? No I didn't." Snapping his inner restraint to look away, his eyes searched her innocently, scanning his own brain to fit with her reply.   
  
"No, you didn't," And all at once, she wished he had.  
  
His hand touched hers briefly, before he withdrew it back to the coffee mug. "What's going on, Carter?"  
  
A pain seared in the back of herself. She'd never had the chance to tell him.  
  
"When I was stranded, on the Prometheus, I had a lot of visions of...well,"  
  
"Your father...Daniel, Teal'c,"   
  
He'd read the report, she gathered.  
  
"And you. And everyone wanted to talk about my relationships, failures. You uh, came to me last. You said that it wasn't you that was the problem, that it was...well, me. And that I was using you to, stop myself from falling in love with anyone, because I had the notion that I couldn't have you. You said that you would always feel the same way, and that I needed to be happy, so, I made myself happy."  
  
He was momentarily taken back, piercing his lips, but not meeting them to the brim of the cup. "Did I say this?  
  
"Well, no. I don't ACTUALLY know, how you feel. It helped me though, to get over it."  
  
"So, what you're saying is that I did this? I did all of this?"   
  
He found it very hard to believe that he'd driven her into the bed of another man, or even suggested the notion. For that matter, did she really know his at all? Had they not shared anything in the whole seven years? Yet she was prepared to make herself happy, without so much as a bat of on eyelid his way, just because he'd had, in some subconscious, fictitious way said, 'Sure Carter, I love you, but it doesn't matter. Go out, have fun, screw a few guys and then get married. And you know what? I'll just sit here, with a beer and wait until you've FINSHED...   
  
"No! I uh,"  
  
"Couldn't the, 'Jack' that you talked to merely have been, what you really wanted to hear, rather than what actually is?"  
  
*For a man who has spent the greater part of his days playing with yoyos, avoiding intellectual discussions, and pretending to be stupid, he really has been wasting his time making people think that when he comes out with things like this * She thought.  
  
Still, she couldn't answer. They both knew he was right.  
  
Cocking her head to one side, she saw a moment of faltering for the man in front of her, a look a failure in his eyes, squinting at the grey table against his hands. She hadn't spent the bigger and more important chunk of her life with him, not to know when he was angry, or pensive, or just pissed.  
  
To her, he looked hostile, and sexy...stupidly so.   
  
How was it, that a man, this man, could embody every passion in her heart and every repulsive trigger in her brain and cause them to collide simultaneously with one press of a button. The sick thing was that, even though she slept with another man, and had a ball doing it; there were still those moments, when she'd been alone. Moments when that one remaining vision swept across her brain, but unlike the other it held it's self, suspended between her insides causing her to relive it.   
  
If she had kissed him in that moment on that ship, would it have changed everything?  
  
Would they be the ones getting coffee, taking walks, or would it have ended in disaster, a one night stand that left no cut-off points, no feelings?  
  
In looking at the man sitting opposite, she very much doubted it.  
  
"I'm going to say yes to him."   
  
After all, it wasn't him that was the problem,  
  
"I know."  
  
It was her.   
  
'I will go down with this ship  
  
And I won't put my hands up and surrender  
  
There will be no white flag above my door  
  
I'm in love and always will be...' ~ Dido, White Flag.  
  
  
  
And it had been. Her anyway. He'd declined any notion that they knew each other after that, and it hit her hard, harder than she'd ever thought he could. It was difficult operating underneath him, on such a professional level just because their emotional ties lay in shreds. She'd all but cried on the shoulders of Teal'c and Daniel whenever they talked about him, but she couldn't blame him, even though he blamed her, even now, after 6 months, one engagement, two promotions and a break-up later.  
  
So, she knocked and waited for the response.  
  
The door opened quietly, without so much as a creek in contrast to the groaning insults coming from inside.   
  
He looked immediately ruffled, but she suspected that it was due to the fact that at 7:30, on a Saturday, AND his day off, she'd woken him up. And brought him coffee.  
  
"Hi," She said.  
  
Rubbing the back off his head, he feigned interest in greeting her. They weren't Sg-1 anymore, so it really didn't figure in his "It's 7:30 Colonel, what do you want?"  
  
"I've been doing some soul searching,"  
  
"Good for you." He dished out the comment with complete detachment from anything that it may have implied.  
  
"I uh," She half glanced at the limp paper in her hands, finding that his comment had floored her confidence. "I came to give you this." She handed him the sheet.  
  
"What is this?"   
  
"This is my pledge, to you."  
  
"What?" Aside from the fact that he wasn't quite following nor listening for that matter, she really wasn't making much sense to him.  
  
"I, Colonel Samantha Carter, am giving my heart away, to you, General Jonathon O'Neill."  
  
Still stunted by the fact that she'd turned up on his doorstep, he tried to look vague and uninterested in her presence whilst wearing only boxers and a small grey t-shirt. "Again, what?"  
  
In finding a pathetically dozy grin on her face, she answered. "Exactly 3 months ago, to the second, or less, I told you in a coffee shop not far from here, that I was getting married. Well, I am. I'm marrying myself to...you. I pledge, that I will love you, and be in love with you, until the day that I die. Or, until you find that you love someone else, in that case, I'm well...fucked. And I'm hoping, that if you have my heart, then I won't need it, and no one else can look for it."  
  
He glanced silently at the writing on the paper, which by no surprise matched her words almost completely.   
  
"And there's my signature," She indicated with a finger. "At the bottom. Meaning that no matter what you say...I'll never love another man."  
  
Her eyelids fluttered a little against her shaking face, trying to stop the tears from running and her composure lessening faster than she could control. Her eyes grew heavy, wandering in his features, which grew calmer and non responsive. It was making her nervous and giddy, something, which had never happened before.  
  
"Say something." She pleaded. "Jack."  
  
"Can I have the Coffee?"  
  
Glancing down, in the haze of a love-threatening situation, she'd almost forgotten about the 'bribe', and took it upon herself to let out a small laugh.   
  
"Only if you say 'yes'."  
  
"So it's a bribe?"  
  
"Yep."  
  
"How about, you come in, I get the coffee, and we'll discuss the 'yes'?"  
  
For all she cared, he could have said 'I love you' and it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference, other than the notion that he hadn't told her to get lost...she'd prepared for a emotional fire fight.   
  
"Thank you."  
  
And that was it.   
  
As she followed him in, she knew. She knew with shame and truth and understanding that he wouldn't deny her. He never had. In all the years, he'd never once said that he was the wedge in the door, that he didn't feel anything for her and that she was the only one. She could probably do a lot of things, and he would still, eventually let her in. She just hoped that it was all worth it...  
  
And it was.   
  
'Someone like you,   
  
Make it all worthwhile  
  
Someone like you  
  
Make me satisfied,  
  
Someone exactly little like you...' ~ 'Someone Like You' Van Morrison   
  
Feeding, would ease my tortured Soul, and keep me sane... so please?  
  
Athena 


End file.
